Hope is Restored cuts ribbon on office

BY DAN HILDEBRAN

ClayCivic.com Publisher

A Clay County nonprofit dedicated to helping children and women recover from human trafficking cut the ribbon on its new offices on College Drvie Friday afternoon.

“Our mission is to bring awareness and education to our community because that is the first step towards eradicating this horrendous trade,” said Hope is Restored Associate Director Brenda Harris.  “We actually rescue children and women who are in the enslavement of human trafficking, and then we spend a couple of years of restoration.”

Harris added that Hope is Restored opened the first safe house for victims of human trafficking in the county.

In a video posted on the charity’s website, Founder and Executive Director Erica Smith said she first heard about the scourge of human trafficking while attending a women’s conference.

There she heard Christine Caine, the founder of the A21 Campaign, which educates the public about human trafficking.

“I had no idea that we live in the land of the free and the home of the brave that modern-day slavery existed,” she said. “I was wrecked. I went home, and I did as much searching on the internet as I possibly could do. I watched videos. I looked for every single thing that I could find out about human trafficking.  My heart was broken even more.”

Smith said that after volunteering at a local safe house, she traveled to Greece with the A21 Campaign and learned about the practices of the sex industry and the behaviors of its ringleaders.

In 2018, 10 years after she was first exposed to the plague of human trafficking, Smith decided to form an organization to fight the industry after listening to a victim recount her day-to-day experiences while enslaved in the criminal activity.

“At that moment, I knew that God wanted me to step out of the boat,” she recalled. “At that moment, I knew that I was going to have an organization that would take part in ending modern-day slavery, and that is how Hope is Restored came about.”

The nonprofit is a project of Impact Clay, which supports several Clay County community groups, including Food for Clay County, Operation Barnabas, the Clay Education Foundation, the College Drive Initiative, and the High Ridge Initiative.

The ribbon cutting for Hope is Restored occurred at its Impact Clay Professional Center office.